The Waterloo Roll Call: With Biographical Notes and AnecdotesDalton, Charles
History
The Waterloo Roll Call: With Biographical Notes and Anecdotes
Dalton, Charles
Great Britain. Army -- Registers; Waterloo, Battle of, Waterloo, Belgium, 1815
place, and foreign auxiliaries helped to bring up Wellington’s army in
Flanders to the required strength. Of Wellington’s 106,000 barely
one-third were British. The remainder consisted of “King’s German
Legion,” “Hanoverian Levies,” “Brunswick Contingent,” “Nassau
Contingent,” “Dutch and Belgian Troops,” and “Nassauers in Dutch
service.” Of this polyglot force the German Legion, both cavalry and
infantry, were deserving of the highest praise for their conduct on
Waterloo Day. They formed part of the British army for nearly a dozen
years, and many British officers held commissions in the “Legion.” I
have been obliged to leave out the German Legion officers in the
following ROLL CALL (excepting those who served on the Staff), and it
would be invidious, when all did so well, to pick out the British
officers who served in the “Legion” at Waterloo and record their
services when those of their German brother-officers are omitted. I
cannot even make an exception of Colonel (afterwards Baron) Hugh
Halkett, who, like a knight in the olden days of chivalry, singled out a
French general (Cambronne) in single combat, and took him prisoner.
The Hanoverian levies did well also, excepting one regiment, which
refused to charge the French when commanded so to do. And this was
doubtless owing to the _lâcheté_ of their colonel, who, when ordered to
lead his regiment to the charge, declined to do so, saying he had no
confidence in his men. It is related that Captain Horace Seymour, who
had brought this officer Lord Uxbridge’s orders, addressed “a few words
of plain Saxon” to him, “which no gentleman ought to have listened to
unmoved,” but the only effect they had on the Hanoverian was to hasten
his departure to the rear. The Brunswick Contingent fought at a
disadvantage at Waterloo, having lost their brave leader (the Duke of
Brunswick) at Quatre Bras. Of the Nassau, Dutch, and Belgian troops it
is only fair to say that they were, mostly, utterly useless at Waterloo.
The glamour of Napoleon was upon them. They had lately been in his
service, and had a settled conviction that Wellington would be defeated
and his army cut to pieces. “Come over to us, brave Belgians!” shouted a
French regiment at Waterloo to their Belgian opponents in the battle.
But the “brave Belgians” preferred making “a retrograde movement for
strategical reasons,” and retired from the field, carrying news of
Wellington’s defeat to Brussels.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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